


Have I Ever Asked

by lodessa



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Love Confessions, Post-Canon, but she needs help exploring the most important territory, kathryn janeway may be an explorer, never enough endgame fixes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27653528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: Looking to escape from her feelings of loss upon returning to Earth, Kathryn asks Tuvok if she can come visit him on Vulcan.  His response sends her in a different direction.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 41
Kudos: 135





	Have I Ever Asked

“Captain… Kathryn, you are indeed welcome to visit my family on Vulcan. However, as your friend, I am obligated at this time to note that running away from your problems is an inadvisable coping strategy.”

“I’m not…” Kathryn begins to protest, but it is hard to resist the power of Tuvok’s stare and raised eyebrow, even on the other side of the viewscreen. “Alright, I am. I need time to process all these changes, Tuvok. Time and space to accept the way things are now.”

Or that they had never really been the way she had believed them to be, she does not add.

“I have never known you to accept any situation which you do not find adequate, especially without first going to great lengths in your attempts to alter such a situation.”

“This isn’t a command decision, Tuvok. What am I supposed to do, set a team of scientists on solving the mysteries of the human heart? I can’t order people to feel differently than they do.”

Fine. If he wants to talk about this, they’ll talk about it. If he wants her to confess that her heart is shattered, that she feels aimless and alone in the heart of federation space, more so than she ever had in uncharted territory, all because she’s lost Chakotay… lost him if he was ever really hers to claim.

“And yet, you are attempting to order exactly that of yourself, are you not?” Tuvok points out.

“It’s more complicated than that,” she sighs. “Time does change things eventually. Well, at least usually it does.”

It had when she lost her father and Justin. It had with Mark. She has to believe that it will have the same curative properties now, though it feels like she is walking around with a gaping hole in her chest.

“Have you attempted, in any way, to find a different resolution?” Tuvok once again redirects the conversation.

“Just what is it you think I need to do, Tuvok? Since you clearly think you know exactly why I’m out of sorts and what I should do about it,” she snaps, throwing her hands up in the air.

“When was the last time you talked to Chakotay?” he asks directly, no generalities or aphorisms to mask what they are really talking about, who they are really talking about.

“I… well I saw him a few weeks ago at Tom and B’Elanna’s anniversary dinner,” she offers, trying not to think too hard about how that evening had felt, about how she’d felt naked and raw, exposed.

“You saw him. Did you speak with him at any length?” Tuvok presses, as if he knows the answer, despite having been back on Vulcan these last months.

“There were a lot of people there and Harry really wanted me to talk to that girlfriend of his,” she replies lamely, knowing that she’d avoided even meeting Chakotay’s eyes lest he interpret the wrong thing from it.

“When was the last time the two of you had a real conversation? Perhaps you have been having those dinners, as you always used to have when we were in the Delta Quadrant,” Tuvok suggests, though she is relatively sure he knows the answer to both.

“Tuvok, just get to the point,” she almost rolls her eyes. There is nothing more frustrating than when a Vulcan decides to get pedantic to make a point.

“Since you are clearly grieving the loss of intimacy with him, perhaps you ought to reach out instead of running away from that feeling.”

There’s a slight change in inflection when he says the word intimacy, as if that word alone holds the weight of the wrong sentence.

“Who says I-” Again, as always, Tuvok’s certainty is hard to argue with. She knows it is difficult for him to discuss human expressions of emotion, that for him to make this effort is an expression of the depth and value of their friendship from him. “Things were bound to change, with us getting home.”

Her words sound like an excuse, even in her own ears, a weak one at that.

“Indeed,” Tuvok says, “However, that does not dictate that the ways in which they must change are predetermined.”

“Tuvok…” she groans in frustration, knowing that Tuvok would never intentionally do her any harm and yet squirming under his well intentioned scrutiny.

“I have been your friend for many years now. I have never witnessed you to be so connected, so intimate, so supported as you have been in your relationship with Commander Chakotay. Do not throw that away, simply because you do not want to experience the vulnerability of saying as much to him. To put it plainly: tell him that you miss him and that you love him.”

When Tuvok decides to be blunt, he does not do it by half measures. Kathryn finds she cannot speak for a good many moments, and when she does, she hears the shaking in her own voice.

“You knew?” 

“I would not have been a very useful tactical officer to you all these years if I’d lacked the basic level of observation required for that certainty. You are a complex woman, but you are not subtle.”

She’s thought this whole time that she showed restraint, resisted the urge to let down her walls and indulge in her feelings for him, in what she had imagined were his feelings for her. That’s the real question, not the fact that Tuvok knows about how she feels for Chakotay, but his clinical assessment of what Chakotay might have felt in return. 

“And Chakotay?” she risks asking, though she isn’t sure she wants to hear the answer.

“He also lacked sufficient discretion to conceal his devotion for you to any but the most casual of observers.” Tuvok seems almost amused by her question, as though she were a child asking why the sun is not visible at night or why fish can’t breathe air.

“Do you think he knows how I feel about him?” she swallows, trying to make sense of Tuvok’s perspective, trying to decide whether it actually changes anything.

“I believe that is a question you must ask him yourself,” Tuvok demures and if he were here she would very likely struggle to resist the urge to strangle him for his smugness. “I must go now. Be well, Kathryn, and think on what I have said.”

She finds herself laughing, staring at the blank screen once Tuvok is disconnected. She’s not sure what to make of his unsolicited candor on the topic she’s been trying desperately not to think about, but the absurdity of it, of all the time and energy she spent over the years thinking she could maintain control or at least the outward appearance of it when it came to her feelings for Chakotay. 

Tuvok apparently knew, knew and it seemed approved of whatever it was she’d thought they had. He even had implied that others must have known too, that she had utterly failed to mask her feelings.

Then again… his assessment of Chakotay’s state of mind, state of emotion. Not for the first time since her future self had revealed unwelcome truths, she wants to scream, to tear at her hair and clothes, to fall apart.

“I can come back later.”

The sudden intrusion of his voice from the direction of the doorway, familiar and yet unexpected, breaks through the sensation of borderline hysteria she had been succumbing to.

“Chakotay…” she breathes in sharply, before turning away from the viewscreen towards where he must be standing and finding him right there in the entry to her office. She drinks in the sight of him, out of uniform in a casual open necked shirt, looking like he might have stepped out of a holoprogram. “H-how long have you been standing there?”

It dawns on her that he could have been standing there for a while, could have heard much of her conversation with Tuvok. Had Tuvok known he was there? Had they planned this? Kathryn sounds paranoid even to herself and yet she still can’t help thinking it.

“How long do you want me to have been standing here?” he asks, biting that perfect lip of his and looking a little bit sheepish but a little but self satisfied at the same time. 

She almost tells him to tell her he just walked in, that he’s wondering what’s so funny. But Tuvok’s advice makes her bold, or maybe it is the overwhelming sense of loss that’s been haunting her since they got back to the alpha quadrant.

“That depends,” she replies, perching herself on the surface of her desk and regarding his expression carefully, “How much of it do you want to have heard?”

“Then maybe I should just tell you why I came to see you today,” he says, taking on step forward into the room and then another, and her heart sinks. 

“It wasn’t just to spy on my personal calls then?” she asks with a glibness she wishes she felt.

She can think of multiple reasons Chakotay might be here, each more devastating than the last.

“I miss you too, Kathryn,” he surprises her again by saying, with an earnestness she recognizes. “I know you have your pride and I have mine, but frankly I don’t want to live like this, you and I being nothing but a memory to one another.”

“What does Seven think about that?” she almost hisses, jaw clenched, gripping the edge of the desk as Chakotay takes another few steps forward.

“I imagine she probably misses you too,” he shrugs, before lowering his voice slightly and adding. “Though not the way I do.”

“Chakotay…” she warns, as he stops a mere arms reach away from her. 

“Do you want me to grovel?” he asks, finally unclasping his hands from behind his back and bringing one between them, so she can see the blossom he is holding between his fingers. “Because I’ll grovel if that’s what it takes.”

With that he lowers himself down to his knees, keeping his eyes focused on her face and the peace rose outstretched towards her.

“Why?” she asks, not able to believe the only explanation that seems to make any sense of what he is saying.

“Because I love you, Kathryn. I love you and part of me hopes that you could love me too, now that we aren’t alone on the other side of the galaxy, now that we could both walk away if we wanted to. I came here hoping to maybe thaw the ice a little, start small, but the truth is that I did hear some of that conversation you were having with Tuvok and I don’t want to unhear it.”

“You love me?” she asks, sliding off the desk and putting her feet on the floor and taking the hand offering her the rose between both of her own. “Just like that? You love me.”

“Haven’t I always?” he replies, his face so open, so hopeful. “Surely you knew.”

“But…” she can’t say it, can’t put words to what she’d felt, feared, been devastated by.

“I’ve made mistakes,” he told her. “I lost faith and for that I am truly sorry. But I always told myself if we made it, if we completed our journey back from the delta quadrant… that I would at least try. I told myself I had enough hope, enough courage for that… and I’m ashamed it has taken me all these months to work up that courage.”

“I thought you were avoiding me,” she confesses. “I thought.”

She thought he was moving on, with Seven. She thought he had abandoned her. She thought he didn’t care, at least not the way she’d relied on believing he cared.

“I love you,” he repeats again. “I love you and I want us to be together, so tell me… tell me if I am allowed to have heard your confession to Tuvok.”

“No,” she tells him, and watches his face fall, just before she lowers herself down to his level. “Let me do this the way it should be done.”

“Kathryn?” he seems confused and she can’t blame him, but she doesn’t want to be a coward who only tells the truth when she has no other choice, when the beans are already spilled, when she is sure there is no other option.

She reaches out and traces the side of his face, brushing her thumb across his lips and feels him shudder at her touch. 

“I miss you, Chakotay,” she exhales, feeling the tension release from her very bones. “I miss you and I love you, and I want us to be together.”

“Then let’s be together,” he murmurs, just before her lips reach his.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the anonymous prompt received on tumblr: Janeway/Chakotay “h-how long have you been standing there?”
> 
> I know it took me a while to get to Chakotay actually showing up, but I felt like it was important to show exactly what he might have overhead.


End file.
